JEREMY CORBYN is twice as popular as Labour leadership “front runner” Andy Burnham on social media, independent research revealed yesterday.

Talkwalker’s analysis of 500,000 social media posts on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Google+ found that Mr Corbyn had “outshone” his rivals.

Despite launching his campaign just three weeks ago, the left candidate has been mentioned more than 245,000 times across the social media web sites — almost half of all comments about the contest.

That dwarfs the 74,000 mentions for Mr Burnham, 30,000 for Yvette Coopper and 45,000 for Liz Kendall.

“Corbyn has quickly ­outshined his peers with simple, powerful messages that resonate well with the Labour base,” said Talkwater chief executive Robert Glaesener.

“With almost two months of hustings to come, anything can happen, but his competitors in the leadership race will have to work much harder than they are doing to challenge his social standing.”

The Islington North MP was also more likely to attract positive comments and fewer negative comments than his rivals.
Thirty per cent of all comments about Mr Corbyn were positive, while 23 per cent were negative.

The words mostly commonly used in posts about him are genuine, passionate, progressive, convincing, logical and balanced.

Just 14 per cent of Mr Burnham’s mentions were positive, compared to the 61 per cent that were negative.